One might imagine, after Bobby’s heroic declarations, that, like young David of old, he would immediately proceed to stride forth and slay his giant. There stood his Goliath, full panoplied, sneering, waiting; but alas! Bobby had neither sling nor stone. It was all very well to announce in fine frenzy that he would smash the Consolidated, destroy the political ring, drive Sam Stone and his henchmen out of town and wrest all his goods and gear from Silas Trimmer; but until he could find a place to plant his foot, descry an opening in the armor and procure an adequate weapon, he might just as well bottle his fuming and wait; so Bobby waited. In the meantime he stuck very closely to the Brightlight office, finding there, in the practice of petty economics and the struggle with well-nigh impossible conditions, ample food for thought. In a separate bank reposed the new fund of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which he kept religiously aside from the affairs of the Brightlight, and this fund also waited; for Bobby was not nearly so feverish to find instant employment for it as he had been with the previous ones—though he had endless chances. People with the most unheard of schemes seemed to have a peculiar scent for unsophisticated money, and not only local experts in the gentle art of separation flocked after him, but out of town specialists came to him in shoals. To these latter he took great satisfaction in displaying the gem of his collection of post-mortem letters from old John Burnit:
“You don’t need to go away from home to be skinned; moreover, it isn’t patriotic.”
That usually stopped them. He was growing quite sophisticated, was Bobby, quite able to discern the claws beneath the velvet paw, quite suspicious of all the ingenious gentlemen who wanted to make a fortune for him; and their frantic attempts to “get his goat,” as Biff Bates expressed it, had become as good as a play to this wise young person, as also to the wise young person’s trustee.
Agnes, who was helping Bobby wait, came occasionally to the office of the Brightlight on business, and nearly always Bobby had reduced to paper some gaudy new scheme that had been proposed to him, over which they both might laugh. In great hilarity one morning they were going over the prospectus of a plan to reclaim certain swamp lands in Florida, when the telephone bell rang, and from Bobby’s difficulty in understanding and his smile as he hung up the receiver, Agnes knew that something else amusing had turned up.
“It is from Schmirdonner,” he explained as he turned to her again. “He’s the conductor of the orchestra at the Orpheum, you know. I gather from what he says that there are some stranded musicians here who probably speak worse English than myself, and he’s sending them up to me to see about arranging a benefit for them. You’d better wait; it might be fun, or you might want to help arrange the benefit.”
“No,” disclaimed Agnes, laughing and drawing her impedimenta together for departure, “I’ll leave both the fun and the philanthropy to you. I know you’re quite able to take care of them. I’ll just wait long enough to hear how we’re to get rid of the water down in Florida. I suppose we bore holes in the ground and let it run out.”
“By no means,” laughed Bobby. “It’s no where near so absurdly simple as that,” and he turned once more to the prospectus which lay open on the desk before them.
Before they were through with it there suddenly erupted into the outer office, where Johnson and Applerod glared at each other day by day over their books, a pandemonium of gabbling. Agnes, with a little exclamation of dismay at the time she had wasted, rose in a hurry, and immediately after she passed through the door there bounded into the room a rotund little German with enormous and extremely thick glasses upon his knob of a nose, a grizzled mustache that poked straight up on both sides of that knob, and an absurd toupee that flared straight out all around on top of the bald spot to which it was pasted. Behind him trailed a pudgy man of so exactly the Herr Professor’s height and build that it seemed as if they were cast in the same spherical mold, but he was much younger and had jet black hair and a jet black mustache of such tiny proportions as to excite amazement and even awe. Still behind him was as unusually large young woman, fully a head taller than either of the two men, who had an abundance of jet black hair, and was dressed in a very rich robe and wrap, both of which were somewhat soiled and worn.
“Signor R-r-r-r-icardo, der grosse tenore—Mees-ter Burnit,” introduced the rotund little German, with a deep bow commensurate with the greatness of the great tenor. “Signorina Car-r-r-avaggio—Mees-ter Burnit. I, Mees-ter Burnit, Ich bin Brofessor Frühlingsvogel.”
Bobby, for the lack of any other handy greeting, merely bowed and smiled, whereupon Signorina Caravaggio, stepping into a breach which otherwise would certainly have been embarrassing, seated herself comfortably upon the edge of Bobby’s desk and swung one large but shapely foot while she explained matters.